At last you're tired of this elderly world

At last you're tired of this elderly world, 12 x 12", 2007

Franklin has a post today about digital technology and its drawbacks. I thought about this a lot as I worked on the wall pieces for this show, and I made them in a new way for me that incorporated my Photoshop skillz in my process. To get to the above image (with the title being a line lifted from Apollinaire's great poem Zone) first I drew tons of little drawings, some elaborate, but some little scribbles in a back-pocket notebook:



I then scanned them all in, composed and collaged them in Photoshop and output a digital "sketch":



I used this as a guide for putting the pieces together in the real world, and you can see by comparing the top image with the sketch some new things happened in the actual making.

This was a new and weird way for me to work, and I liked it - I was able to find things in the digital part that I wouldnt have found if I just made them in meatspace, but I was able to stay loose and improvisational in the final making. I don't think its apparent I used the computer at all even though it was a vital part of the process.

At the end I looked at the printed sketches alongside the real things and saw why I want to keep the hand in the pieces. There were little mixups and messes, tiny details that made things not quite square or straight, places that had surprises.


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HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE
Gallery Neptune , Bethesda, Maryland.
April 6 - 28. 2007, reception Friday April 13, 6 - 9 pm.
All the work, and a 100-page limited-edition book of drawings published at the same time, is based on the poetry of Guillaume Apollinaire.